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Raster data processing in GRASS GIS
Raster maps in general
A "raster map" is a data layer consisting of a gridded array of cells. It has a certain number of rows
and columns, with a data point (or null value indicator) in each cell. These may exist as a 2D grid or as
a 3D cube made up of many smaller cubes, i.e. a stack of 2D grids.
The geographic boundaries of the raster map are described by the north, south, east, and west fields.
These values describe the lines which bound the map at its edges. These lines do NOT pass through the
center of the grid cells at the edge of the map, but along the edge of the map itself. i.e. the
geographic extent of the map is described by the outer bounds of all cells within the map.
As a general rule in GRASS GIS:
1 Raster output maps have their bounds and resolution equal to those of the current computational
region.
2 Raster input maps are automatically cropped/padded and rescaled (using nearest-neighbour
resampling) to match the current region.
3 Raster input maps are automatically masked if a raster map named MASK exists. The MASK is only
applied when reading maps from the disk.
There are a few exceptions to this: r.in.* programs read the data cell-for-cell, with no resampling. When
reading non-georeferenced data, the imported map will usually have its lower-left corner at (0,0) in the
location’s coordinate system; the user needs to use r.region to "place" the imported map.
Some programs which need to perform specific types of resampling (e.g. r.resamp.rst) read the input maps
at their original resolution then do the resampling themselves.
r.proj has to deal with two regions (source and destination) simultaneously; both will have an impact
upon the final result.
Raster import and export
The module r.in.gdal offers a common interface for many different raster formats. Additionally, it also
offers options such as on-the-fly location creation or extension of the default region to match the
extent of the imported raster map. For special cases, other import modules are available. The full map
is always imported.
For importing scanned maps, the user will need to create a x,y-location, scan the map in the desired
resolution and save it into an appropriate raster format (e.g. tiff, jpeg, png, pbm) and then use
r.in.gdal to import it. Based on reference points the scanned map can be recified to obtain geocoded
data.
Raster maps are exported with r.out.gdal into common formats. Also r.out.bin, r.out.vtk, r.out.ascii and
other export modules are available. They export the data according to the current region settings. If
those differ from the original map, the map is resampled on the fly (nearest neighbor algorithm). In
other words, the output will have as many rows and columns as the current region. To export maps with
various grid spacings (e.g, 500x500 or 200x500), you can just change the region resolution with g.region
and then export the map. The resampling is done with nearest neighbor algorithm in this case. If you want
some other form of resampling, first change the region, then explicitly resample the map with e.g.
r.resamp.interp or r.resamp.stats, then export the resampled map.
GRASS GIS raster map exchange between different locations (same projection) can be done in a lossless way
using the r.pack and r.unpack modules.
Metadata
The r.info module displays general information about a map such as region extent, data range, data type,
creation history, and other metadata. Metadata such as map title, units, vertical datum etc. can be
updated with r.support. Timestamps are managed with r.timestamp. Region extent and resolution are
mangaged with r.region.
Raster map operations
Resampling methods and interpolation methods
GRASS raster map processing is always performed in the current region settings (see g.region), i.e. the
current region extent and current raster resolution is used. If the resolution differs from that of the
input raster map(s), on-the-fly resampling is performed (nearest neighbor resampling). If this is not
desired, the input map(s) has/have to be resampled beforehand with one of the dedicated modules.
The built-in nearest-neighbour resampling of raster data calculates the centre of each region cell, and
takes the value of the raster cell in which that point falls.
If the point falls exactly upon a grid line, the exact result will be determined by the direction of any
rounding error. One consequence of this is that downsampling by a factor which is an even integer will
always sample exactly on the boundary between cells, meaning that the result is ill-defined.
The following modules are available for reinterpolation of "filled" raster maps (continuous data) to a
different resolution:
• r.resample uses the built-in resampling, so it should produce identical results as the on-the-fly
resampling done via the raster import modules.
• r.resamp.interp Resampling with nearest neighbor, bilinear, and bicubic method: method=nearest
uses the same algorithm as r.resample, but not the same code, so it may not produce identical
results in cases which are decided by the rounding of floating-point numbers.
For r.resamp.interp method=bilinear and method=bicubic, the raster values are treated as samples
at each raster cell’s centre, defining a piecewise-continuous surface. The resulting raster
values are obtained by sampling the surface at each region cell’s centre. As the algorithm only
interpolates, and doesn’t extrapolate, a margin of 0.5 (for bilinear) or 1.5 (for bicubic) cells
is lost from the extent of the original raster. Any samples taken within this margin will be
null.
• r.resamp.rst Regularized Spline with Tension (RST) interpolation 2D: Behaves similarly, i.e. it
computes a surface assuming that the values are samples at each raster cell’s centre, and samples
the surface at each region cell’s centre.
• r.resamp.bspline Bicubic or bilinear spline interpolation with Tykhonov regularization.
• For r.resamp.stats without -w, the value of each region cell is the chosen aggregate of the
values from all of the raster cells whose centres fall within the bounds of the region cell.
With -w, the samples are weighted according to the proportion of the raster cell which falls
within the bounds of the region cell, so the result is normally unaffected by rounding error (a
minuscule difference in the position of the boundary results in the addition or subtraction of a
sample weighted by a minuscule factor; also, The min and max aggregates can’t use weights, so -w
has no effect for those).
• r.fillnulls for Regularized Spline with Tension (RST) interpolation 2D for hole filling (e.g.,
SRTM DEM)
Furthermore, there are modules available for reinterpolation of "sparse" (scattered points or lines)
maps:
• Inverse distance weighted average (IDW) interpolation (r.surf.idw)
• Interpolating from contour lines (r.contour)
• Various vector modules for interpolation
For Lidar and similar data, r.in.lidar and r.in.xyz support loading and binning of ungridded x,y,z ASCII
data into a new raster map. The user may choose from a variety of statistical methods in creating the
new raster map.
Otherwise, for interpolation of scattered data, use the v.surf.* set of modules.
Raster MASKs
If a raster map named "MASK" exists, most GRASS raster modules will operate only on data falling inside
the masked area, and treat any data falling outside of the mask as if its value were NULL. The mask is
only applied when reading an existing GRASS raster map, for example when used in a module as an input
map.
The mask is read as an integer map. If MASK is actually a floating-point map, the values will be
converted to integers using the map’s quantisation rules (this defaults to round-to-nearest, but can be
changed with r.quant).
(see r.mask)
Raster map statistics
A couple of commands are available to calculate local statistics (r.neighbors), and global statistics
(r.statistics, r.surf.area). Profiles and transects can be generated (d.profile, r.profile, r.transect)
as well as histograms (d.histogram) and polar diagrams (d.polar). Univariate statistics (r.univar) and
reports are also available (r.report,r.stats, r.volume).
Raster map algebra and aggregation
The r.mapcalc command provides raster map algebra methods. The r.resamp.stats command resamples raster
map layers using various aggregation methods, the r.statistics command aggregates one map based on a
second map. r.resamp.interp resamples raster map layers using interpolation.
Regression analysis
Both linear (r.regression.line) and multiple regression (r.regression.multi) are supported.
Hydrologic modeling toolbox
Watershed modeling related modules are r.basins.fill, r.water.outlet, r.watershed, and r.terraflow.
Water flow related modules are r.carve, r.drain, r.fill.dir, r.fillnulls, r.flow, and r.topidx. Flooding
can be simulated with r.lake. Hydrologic simulation model are available as r.sim.sediment, r.sim.water,
and r.topmodel.
Raster format
In GRASS GIS, raster data can be stored as 2D or 3D grids.
2D raster maps
2D rasters support three data types (for technical details, please refer to the Wiki article GRASS raster
semantics):
• 32bit signed integer (CELL),
• single-precision floating-point (FCELL), and
• double-precision floating-point (DCELL).
In most GRASS GIS resources, 2D raster maps are usually called "raster" maps.
3D raster maps
The 3D raster map type is usually called "3D raster" but other names like "RASTER3D", "voxel", "volume",
"GRID3D" or "3d cell" are yet common. 3D rasters support only single- and double-precision
floating-point. 3D raster’s single-precision data type is most often called "float", and the
double-precision one "double".
No-data management and data portability
GRASS GIS distinguishes NULL and zero. When working with NULL data, it is important to know that
operations on NULL cells lead to NULL cells.
The GRASS GIS raster format is architecture independent and portable between 32bit and 64bit machines.
Raster compression
All GRASS GIS raster map types are by default ZSTD compressed if available, otherwise ZLIB compressed.
Through the environment variable GRASS_COMPRESSOR the compression method can be set to RLE, ZLIB, LZ4,
BZIP2, or ZSTD.
Important: the NULL file compression can be turned off with export GRASS_COMPRESS_NULLS=0. Raster maps
with NULL file compression can only be opened with GRASS GIS 7.2.0 or later. NULL file compression for a
particular raster map can be managed with r.null -z.
Integer (CELL type) raster maps can be compressed with RLE if the environment variable GRASS_COMPRESSOR
exists and is set to RLE. However, this is not recommended.
Floating point (FCELL, DCELL) raster maps never use RLE compression; they are either compressed with
ZLIB, LZ4, BZIP2, ZSTD or are uncompressed.
RLE
DEPRECATED Run-Length Encoding, poor compression ratio but fast. It is kept for backwards
compatibility to read raster maps created with GRASS 6. It is only used for raster maps of type CELL.
FCELL and DCELL maps are never and have never been compressed with RLE.
ZLIB
ZLIB’s deflate is the default compression method for all raster maps, if ZSTD is not available. GRASS
GIS 7 uses by default 1 as ZLIB compression level which is the best compromise between speed and
compression ratio, also when compared to other available compression methods. Valid levels are in the
range [1, 9] and can be set with the environment variable GRASS_ZLIB_LEVEL.
LZ4
LZ4 is a very fast compression method, about as fast as no compression. Decompression is also very
fast. The compression ratio is generally higher than for RLE but worse than for ZLIB. LZ4 is
recommended if disk space is not a limiting factor.
BZIP2
BZIP2 can provide compression ratios much higher than the other methods, but only for large raster
maps (> 10000 columns). For large raster maps, disk space consumption can be reduced by 30 - 50% when
using BZIP2 instead of ZLIB’s deflate. BZIP2 is the slowest compression and decompression method.
However, if reading from / writing to a storage device is the limiting factor, BZIP2 compression can
speed up raster map processing. Be aware that for smaller raster maps, BZIP2 compression ratio can be
worse than other compression methods.
ZSTD
ZSTD (Zstandard) provides compression ratios higher than ZLIB but lower than BZIP2 (for large data).
ZSTD compresses up to 4x faster than ZLIB, and usually decompresses 6x faster than ZLIB. ZSTD is the
default compression method if available.
In the internal cellhd file, the value for "compressed" is 1 for RLE, 2 for ZLIB, 3 for LZ4,4 for BZIP2,
and 5 for ZSTD.
Obviously, decompression is controlled by the raster map’s compression, not the environment variable.
See also
• Introduction into 3D raster data (voxel) processing
• Introduction into vector data processing
• Introduction into image processing
• Introduction into temporal data processing
• Database management
• Projections and spatial transformations
SOURCE CODE
Available at: Raster data processing in GRASS GIS source code (history)
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© 2003-2019 GRASS Development Team, GRASS GIS 7.8.2 Reference Manual